


in silent memory

by crowry



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Drift Side Effects, Gen, Hermann Gottlieb Has MS, M/M, Neurodivergent Newton Geiszler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-05
Updated: 2014-06-05
Packaged: 2018-02-03 13:36:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1746566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowry/pseuds/crowry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermann and Newt deal with if not new, then heightened neural affects of drifting with a two hundred ton colonist embryo hivemind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in silent memory

At the end of a day, several months after the breach is closed, Hermann shows up at Newt's door looking like he's lost a dare. Newt goes to meet him in the hallway, which is quieter than it's ever been and eerie for it. Neither of them speaks, which has become customary over the past few weeks. Time was, there was always something to discuss—well, to argue about. Kaiju origin theories, mathematics versus trial and error, the merits of the texture of decomposing kaiju flesh through grade A latex gloves. How wrong the other was about his theories. Now, as Newt has heard many a Jaeger pilot intone, the drift is silence. It has created silence. Poetic bullshit, in his (former) opinion, but he's definitely never spoken less to Hermann Gottlieb since they first met over a decade ago.

Jaeger pilots have the benefit of repeat offense, or, you know, whatever. Constant connection. How many drops do they get, so many drifts, so many beautiful, terrifying kaiju they take down. Newt has been in the drift twice. He knows more about the kaiju hivemind than Hermann's thought process. But the fact that he does know a little about Hermann's thought process, about his history, about the things that are always on his mind, has created a rift as terrifying as the breach.

Hermann is hunched, shoulders rounded, pink in the face and looking roughly in the direction of Newt's cowlick. "What is it?" Newt asks, pulling a pen out of his chest pocket and clicking it rapidly, for something to do with his hands. Seeing Hermann at a loss for words has been perpetually startling, anxiety swelling in him each time they sit in silence, each second Newt is unsure of where he stands with Doctor Hermann Gottlieb. Hermann's mouth pulls into an even more serious line.

"I'm—" Hermann starts, leaning onto his cane and clutching at his pant leg. Attention diverted, Newt catches a glimpse of red and blue argyle socks on skinny, skinny ankles. It startles him when Hermann speaks again. "I'm having a problem," he says. He sounds breathless. Newt laughs a little, because what else can he do. He also fumbles the pen, which rolls directly into a grate in the floor, lost forever. Hermann barely spares it a glance.

"What kind of problem, man?" Newt wants to know. He shoves his hands into his pockets, then pulls them out again, worried that this is flippant. if Hermann is coming to him—openly, unprompted, with a Problem, it's gotta be something important. Its gotta be something personal. It's got to be a really bad idea. Newt is a lot of things: brilliant, proactive to a fault, determined, resourceful, generally incredible, but charisma has never been one of his strengths. For that matter, neither has tact, or even general interpersonal interaction. Newt is not a people-person. You can't tear people apart to see how they work.

"I don't remember a large portion of this past Friday," Hermann says in a very, very tight voice.

"Um," Newt says, and his voice breaks over it. "Did something happen?" And this is clearly the wrong thing to have said, because Hermann's knuckles go white on his cane, and worst of all, he seems to crumple further, his usual stressed hunch becoming a prominent and tense slouch.

"I don't _know_ ," Hermann snarls. "That's the _problem_ , Newton—"

"Alright, man, okay," Newt says, "Don't call me that. Okay—so, last Friday, do you want me to take you to the doctor or, or. What do you want me to do? Can I do anything?"

"Just," Hermann says, either sighing or inhaling through his nose, eyes fluttering shut under a pinched brow. Newt watches his face while his eyes are shut, looking quickly at Hermann's hands again when they open. "Just tell me what happened on Friday," Hermann says, and then, possibly unprecedented: "Please."

The problem with this, of course, is that days blend together in this windowless bunker, and Newt can't really remember Friday from Thursday or Sunday, so Hermann's guess is probably as good as his. It occurs to him as they both take a seat on the concrete steps, Hermann lowering himself carefully a foot away from Newt, hands balanced on his cane between his knees, that maybe Newt is not his first choice for this. It's circumstantial, but what isn't?

He racks his brain, and he does remember an argument they had at dinner regarding the proper amount of cooked that green beans should be, and he recounts this to Hermann, who eventually snaps "I _know_ ," and then looks happier than he has in at least two weeks.

He knows that Hermann, like himself, has been advised never to drift again. For completely separate reasons, of course, and neither of them had the risk of core radiation from Jaeger exposure, so there were some blessings. But Newt's brain has been at a different level of functionality for his whole life. Hermann, who never discusses his MS, who never mentions it, sometimes embodies the chart of increasingly distressed faces Medical Professionals give you to describe your pain or depression on a quantifiable scale. Newt knows that Hermann understands operating on your own terms in everyone else's conditions.

"Is that okay?" Newt asks, after a swollen period of silence he spends running the pad of his index finger along the grooves of the ring on his pinky. "I mean. Um. Are you okay, man?"

"I am better than I was, Newton," Hermann says. And sometimes, Newt can hear his voice, clear as if the memory was his own, from the drift. " _Sometimes, 'better than I was before' is all I can ask for_."

They stay sitting on the steps that lead to Newt's room for several minutes more before Hermann pushes himself to his feet. He wobbles slightly, clearly less stable on his legs today, and Newt raises a hand to his elbow, holding him upright. "Sorry," he says, remembering in a flash the visceral feeling of discomfort Hermann has felt at being touched, remembering not to do this, but Hermann turns around and grasps his hand.

They manage to both look each other in the face at the same time, and Hermann is smiling the way he does when Newt is right.

In Newt's completely unbiased, scientific, absolutely objective opinion, this is Hermann's best smile.

"Thank you, Newton," Hermann says, and with that, he lets go, and a blink later, he several yards down the hallway, presumably heading towards the lab. Newt leaves his door open when he wanders back inside his room, and wonders when remembering their petty, stupid arguments became a worthwhile endeavor. Regardless, he's relieved he has at least retained some information, in some semblance of chronology. If it makes Hermann keep smiling at him like he's right, he will gladly dredge up every old argument he can remember the basis of. The merits of chocolate milk vs. regular milk, the proper process for cleaning the lab at the end of the workday, the proper amount of time to cook box macaroni and cheese, or in Hermann's case, the proper way to not ever purchase or ingest box macaroni and cheese. He will commit those to memory, make note of the winners, keep score of the loose arguments he pulled out of his ass just to have words to say. He can do it if it helps keep Hermann, Hermann.

The drifts he initiated with kaiju fucked with his head more than he wants to think about. His Sensory Processing Disorder has introduced a new barrage of sensations that are unbearable, and he feels the passage of time like wind on his face. Inexplicable but there, unasked for. Newt is awful, feels awful and extraneous with no new kaiju to study. Otachi's spawn has been dissected and distributed into containers, studied and re-studied. Samples have been delivered to universities around the world, Newt's brain protesting feebly at every ice packed air delivery chest that that is _his_ kaiju.

He has no idea what to do with himself, finds himself with infinite energy some days and nothing to apply it to, and none at all on others. But he does know, at least, that out of anyone in the world he has the most leeway and the most allowances with Doctor Hermann Gottlieb, and the drift goes both ways.

Maybe he can't be one of those "does no wrong" people, but he can probably be one of those "is forgiven implicitly before he fucks up" people, to Hermann, and maybe no one else. Newt thinks he could probably grab another doctorate easy, if Hermann Gottlieb was a valid field of study.

 


End file.
